Family
by wanderamaranth
Summary: They were a family of sorts, the usual participants of the Tea Party. The Hatter has a realization when discussing such with Alice one night.


Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. If you like, please review… Did I make a rhyme?

A/N: Slightly inspired by the bonus track "Sea What We Seas" on the Almost Alice album. That, and elements from the Wii "Alice in Wonderland" game. Loads of Hatter/Alice subtext in that, as well. Post movie, but no really defined time frame of when this occurs. I see it vaguely as a year or two down the road. This is un-betaed, so any mistakes are my own.

Summary: They were a family of sorts, the usual participants of the Tea Party. The Hatter has a realization when discussing such with Alice one night. A/H. Burtonverse.

It was true, yes. They were a family of sorts, the usual participants of the Tea Party. Madly unconventional, but a family nonetheless. He thought of them as such as surely as Alice thought of them so. He knew she did, for she had told him just earlier that day that she believed it. Hatter just hadn't realized before their little conversation just how incredibly sad the idea of them being as such would make him, when before, he would have been most especially, futterwackingly happy for her to say they were so.

"When I'm here in Underland, I miss my family so." she had sighed, before continuing with, "Yet when I am Aboveground, I miss my family here."

"Family?" he had questioned, hopeful but not too--he'd always wanted for her to feel most especially welcome in Underland, and if she was defining members of it's society as a family, even a mad, unconventional one, than that was most welcome news indeed. He so wished for his friend to choose to stay, one day, and visit the Aboveground occasionally, instead of the contrariwise way she was living now.

A blush had spread across her face, light. As if she hadn't intended to allow it there, but it came anyways. He was about to tell her that she ought to just tell Embarrassment to leave her alone, in the most animated of language possible, (as he had done long ago) and she'd be the happier for it, when she spoke again.

"Well, yes, of course…" she trailed off, then turned to him, grasping his hand that sat betwixt them in a sudden bout of muchness. Tarrant didn't mind; he enjoyed Alice's muchness greatly. He felt a small flutter, one that had been occurring with greater frequency in Alice's company. To be perfectly honest, he'd first noticed it when a-spying Alice from across the tea-table, on her first adult trip into Underland; they'd only become more insistent when she finally returned to visit again (her having been clever enough to find a Travel mirror large enough for her perfectly delightful, wonderfully suitable, beautifully proportioned Alice-sized body to pass through, yet small enough that she could, as she said, 'avoid awkward questions as to why she needed such a large looking glass whilst ship bound') becoming most active when Alice would smile too widely to be considered a proper lady's smile (as to smile too widely was seen as a dreadful sort of bragging, Alice had told him solemnly one day, as if you had the right to be happier than any other personage, and those Aboveground became most offended when they thought that you might be happier than themselves) or when she unconsciously, casually, touched him. A small hand on his shoulder, fingertips brushing as a teapot was passed, that sort of thing.

His personal bread-and-butterflies, the ones that had taken up residence in his general stomach area (which he told them, quite sternly one day, that it was horribly unconscionable for them to move right in without his express opinion, as it was his stomach, after all. Alice had wrinkled her nose at him, asked him of whom he'd been speaking to, and then was promptly distracted by Mally and March Hare's spontaneous pastry-and-marmalade fight. Good friends, Mally and March.) well, those bread-and-butterflies were always so glad to see Alice, he noted. 'Twas when they were most especially active.

"You do know that I consider you my family, do you not, Tarrant?" Alice reached her other hand up and touched the side of his face lightly. He saw them, then, in a vivid vision, always sitting in the evenings thus. On a garden bench, a small round side table just to their right, holding a single (rather large) pot of tea and two delicate tea cups; she leaned against him, head on his shoulder, perhaps gently questing hands on his face, in his hair, and down his back. Two were all that was required to make a family, were they not? But as soon as that thought formed, another, more pleasanter one arose as well, that of them on the same bench, with the same table, now set with three porcelain cups; Alice's same hands gently questing, with a small girl child at their feet. One with wild strawberry blonde hair and an inquisitively mad smile--oh, but Alice was still speaking.

"And Mally, and McTwisp, and March… You are all my family." She sighed again, a queer little happy but not full sigh, and what she said next destroyed completely the small vision the Hatter had just formed, the delusion he'd just had.

"I've always wanted a brother." She smiled then, just as she smiled at him in the Red Queen's haberdashery studio. Shy, but still a smile. Unaware that she was completely destroying the world of someone whom, before that smile, had thought that they were, if not happy, then almost contented with their lot in life. "I'm so terribly glad I found one in you." Alice leaned into him then, giving him a light, very sibling-ish hug, so she was unable to see his face lose all expression of joy, his tie wilt, his suit fade into a darker shade of brown, and his eyes swirl into a deep shade of blue. There would be no tea-table set for the three of them, or even just the two. She pulled away, and that hurt as well, as he felt each one of his bread-and-butterflies dying within. But he was incapable of being too sad for too long, when Alice was beside him in any manner; so when she looked up at him again, his eyes, while not as vibrantly green as usual, and his tie, while not as animated as usual in her presence, were at least not commentably different.

"I am most gratified to hear you say such to me, Alice." he had nearly whispered. "I think on you as my family, as well."


End file.
